The Aperture for Modern CEOs: Aligning Purpose and Focus

By Sylvana Storey

This book examines and assesses how CEOs defines, navigate and instill key activities of organizational life and provokes and challenges the nature of their practice.

In the 21st Century, the Chief Executive Officers role is both complex and multifaceted. As the key architects of culture in their organizations, how their actions, behaviors and mindset are role modeled and perceived is pivotal and how they in turn, evoke leadership in everyone is essential.

Along with input from Global CEOs, this book examines and assesses how CEOs defines, navigate and instill key activities of organizational life and provokes and challenges the nature of their practice.

It shares practical strategies on how CEOs ways of being can influence and contribute to the adoption and embedment of ways of working that better serve employees, stakeholders and organizations. Ultimately, in the pursuance of healthier organizations!

Key activities of organizational life include purpose and vision; strategy and structure; leaders’ actions, behavior and mindset; culture change and change drivers; new ways of thinking, doing and being and, activities for the future in terms of space, innovation and reimagining.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Business Expert Press
• Release date: Jul 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781637422397

Sylvana Storey

Dr Sylvana Storey, CEO of Global Organizational Integrators, is a recognized Chartered Business Psychologist and Organizational Managing Consultant. She is privileged to have worked with organizations across multiple sectors and geographies and is a trusted adviser and executive coach to ‘C’ level leaders. Sylvana completed her Doctor of Business Administration in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Global Leadership and subsequently authored The Impact of Diversity on Global Leadership Performance: LEAD³ published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2014. She is a contributory author of Business Psychology in Practice, Business Psychology in Action and has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. She sits on the Institute of Advanced Studies Development Board, Durham University.

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Introduction

The Paradox

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) role is often the ultimate goal of ambitious business leaders. However, leadership is not an ideology … it is a reality! And the reality is that, as organizations and their environments have become increasingly disrupted and complex, leadership, as a practice, has lost its way. Leadership may have lost its way for several reasons—I call out four.

First, since the 1990s, the median tenure of CEOs has dramatically shortened from 10 to 5 years, and consequently, it has become challenging for a CEO to advocate, motivate, and embed their strategic direction in this reduced time frame.

Second, CEOs driven by a multitude of pressures will focus on one or two components of organizational life (e.g., shareholder value creation, cost mining) at the expense of other equally important elements of organizational life. The cost of this scenario is that they are unable to align and unify stakeholders to their businesses motivations.

Third, the pace of change has escalated and leaders have to be agile enough to keep abreast of the new, and then put in place the right capabilities and diversity with respect to people, structures, systems, and processes that are able to adapt to this fast pace of change. This level of agility is often wanting.

Fourth, the CEOs own inner circle (the C-suite) and one to two layers below the C-suite level can often compromise the good intentions of the CEO. Due to their position, CEOs are very often not privy to the truth until it is too late or worse, explodes in the blaze of a corporate scandal. Basically, they are told what a group of senior leaders/managers believes they want to hear or even worse benefiting only their group. This can point to a culture that is underscored by fear and territorial factions.

Along with the insights of 15 CEOs, I scrutinize the reality of 21st century CEO leadership, to explore how against this backdrop of disruption, complexity, and pace, the CEO marries their purpose, vision, and strategies, with actions, mindset, and behaviors, as well as other pressing organizational and societal factors.

The first goal of this book is to provide insight as to what actually happens on the ground in terms of what is experienced by internal and external stakeholders. Particularly, how CEOs lead their organizations and ultimately develop them to be fit for the future.

The second goal is to provoke reflection. I hold up a mirror to the role of the CEO that examine the practices of their leadership and how this role can be challenged and evolve to adapt to continuous change.

Third, I provide solutions based on what I observed and what I believe should be taken into account and reflected upon.

Primarily, I am curious on five counts:

1. How the objectives identified by the CEOs for their organizations convert into action and how and why the practices and behavioral choices aligned to these objectives are delivered in the way they are?

2. The level of action and transparency within organizations and the subsequent alignment between what is said and what is done.

3. How CEOs enable their organizational culture to advance and change and how they position the practices of communication, engagement, and inclusion?

4. How new ways of thinking, doing, and being unfold in organizations, and the level of flexibility there is for accommodating difference now and in the future?

5. How CEOs can adapt and guide their organizations in the face of disruptive technologies and business models as well as how political and environmental headwinds might pan out to impact their organizations?

These five curiosities lie at the heart of the five chapters of this book.

Chapter 1 examines how the CEO builds The Foundations of their organization. That is, how they develop and position their company’s purpose, vision, strategy, and structure so as to best harness and capitalize its performance. Do employees understand the reasoning and rationale behind the purpose, vision, strategy, and structure of their organizations? Do they even care?

Chapter 2 assesses The Leadership role of the CEO. It will point to how the concept of leadership has evolved and chiefly, it will ascertain how a CEO’s actions, behaviors, and mindset are actually borne out in today’s current reality. What does a high-performing CEO need to do to deliver on the key components of their role? Do they walk the talk? Do employees know who they are and what they stand for?

In Chapter 3, I discuss The Intangibles often termed the softer elements of organizational life—organizational culture and its associated change drivers: Change drivers such as communication, engagement, and inclusion. Often, these intangibles can take a back seat to the pursuit and energy that it takes to create shareholder value. I scrutinize whether the ways in which these intangibles show up in organizations are actually in reality, check box exercises, and if so, to what detriment to the organization? If not, what is the role that they play in relation to their contribution to organizational life?

In Chapter 4, The New Way, I propose new ways of thinking, doing, and being and evaluate how these new ways can be encouraged and fostered by the CEO and their leadership teams. For instance, is diversity of thinking and behaving reflected in the leadership team? Is the organization open to flexible working patterns and styles? Is the organization tolerant of behavioral differences? Or, do they print and say the right thing and then do the opposite?

Lastly, in Chapter 5 The Future, I explore the concepts of space, curiosity, and reimagine scenarios to come. That is, how do organizations provide space for abstract ideas to surface and materialize and for new trends to develop and be absorbed? How open are CEOs to learning from others and digesting new information so that their own curiosity fuels creativity among the organization and the employees? When reimaging their organizations, what scenarios might be the pressing ones? Is it geopolitical, economical, environmental, or health concerns that force us to adapt our ways of working? How can CEOs create an appetite that embraces challenge as well as provides employees with opportunities to explore alternatives while keeping a pulse on the external world?

These chapters demonstrate what is currently practiced and at stake in these five areas, what might be the complications and whether leaders and their organizations are in jeopardy, or whether they are pursuing an enlightened path toward the future. Specifically, the book examines the role of the CEO in relation to the softer more altruistic elements of their role as opposed to the harder elements such as financial and operational.

This book isn’t written to teach a CEO how to suck eggs. CEOs know and understand the key components of their role. They appreciate the importance of performance outcomes and their part in accepting responsibility for delivering on these outcomes. However, the premise is that often what the CEO intends or believes is being actioned in their organization is often not.

That is, intent does not always translate into action. Strategies go astray as bottlenecks occur due to structure, processes, and systems. People are both complex and emotional and this, coupled with tenuous corporate cultures, can cause the organization to fluster at the point of execution so that they won’t or can’t execute in a way that is meaningful (i.e., why and how it should be done). These factors are particularly evident during times of change and happen because there is a:

•Lack of purpose, vision, strategy, tied to a mismatched structure

•Lack of consistently good actions, behaviors, and mindsets that cloud transparency and prevent collaboration

•Lack of communication, engagement, and inclusion that often lie beneath the surface of toxic and confused cultures and change processes

•Lack of openness to new ways in thinking, doing, and being

•Lack of space to think, be curious, and reimagine an alternative way

My insights stem from a 30-year career as an Organizational Change Management Consultant and Business Psychologist and are built upon my four degrees and three decades of organizational research. As a practitioner, I am frequently privileged and privy to being able to listen, observe, and be involved in many a C-suite discussion as well as being able to actively partake in how these discussions translate into actions.

I describe for leaders, what I believe to be the key deliverables of an organization, the real instances of what happens in their organizations at the front line, and look at what solutions can be put in place to better orchestrate and conduct organizational life in a more productive and effective way. As well as being a curious individual whose wish is to keep growing, learning, and adapting, I speak truth to power.

The book’s structure will set out a position and offer thought leadership. CEOs’ insights, case studies, and observed scenarios will amplify the position that I take and pose challenging questions that I believe CEOs and their organizations should answer. It offers a critical analysis of the interplay between the CEO and their wider organizational systems at large, especially in light of five themes that recurred across my writing: fear, trust, connection, listening, empathy, and emotion.

This approach, combined with the voices from CEOs of leading organizations across the world who were courageous enough to share their informed insights with me, will assimilate what works and what doesn’t work in the pursuit of building healthy organizations.

As this book takes a business stance and offers a perspective on organizational life at the front line, it will not roll out theories. But be assured, it is solidly grounded in learnings from a variety of disciplines such as psychology, organizational development, behavioral economics, anthropology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and philosophy that serve to illustrate and support discussions and enlighten how actions can be directed toward the practical.

My ultimate goal is that it enables CEOs and leaders to inhale and exhale reality so that their organizations and the organizations’ stakeholders can begin to breathe and focus on the health of their organization—an organization that at its heart people matter.

For this reason, this book does not beat around the bush—it tells it as it is! And then, it provides direction. It is direct and straight to the point.

Let’s get to the point! Let’s deconstruct leadership and organizational realities!

CHAPTER 1

The Foundations

Purpose and Vision | Strategy and Structure

What Is the Reality?

Leadership is not an ideology … it is a reality! Leading is not about personality, style, or power. It is about acts of leadership. Leading defines a path for your followers and then leads them through the twists and turns of that path. Leading during the good and the bad times. Leading in the face of change and even when the odds are stacked up against you. Giving credit and taking credit when credit is due but also taking responsibility when things go wrong. Making decisions that are tough and even unpopular, but nevertheless, making that decision!

Employees invest faith, hope, and trust that their CEO can instill a sense of purpose and set a vision for their organization. Purpose and vision are expedited through strategy and structure so that the organization grows and delivers safely, sustainably, equitably, and profitably. Let’s not allow this faith, hope, and trust to be to no avail. CEOs do not need to be technical masters in all of the functions that make up an organization in its totality, but they do need to have and hold the big picture and have a semblance of understanding on them all. As Harvey from the American drama Suits would say, It’s your goddamn job to know.

The leadership reality in this chapter looks at how CEOs lay out and position their purpose, vision, strategy, and structure. That is, the foundations on which their organizations sit upon. More so, how these foundations unfold and evolve to best facilitate high performance. How, by building on these foundations, a CEO steers and navigates their organizations with humanity toward a robust trajectory of growth.

I am curious as to how these foundations laid down by CEOs for their organizations convert into action and how and why the practices and behavioral choices aligned to these foundations are delivered in the way they are.

Do employees understand the reasoning and rationale behind the purpose, vision, strategy, and structure of their organizations? Are your employees aware of the difference their organization is making in the world? Have you painted a vivid and imaginative picture of how the world will look once your organization’s purpose has been realized? What are the core strategies that must be undertaken? Do they even care? And what types of structures best support the strategy so that purpose and vision are realized?

Ben Page, CEO, Ipsos MORI, encapsulates the seriousness of the foundations laid down by the CEOs through an analogy:

I often describe it using the analogy of a painter. The more senior you become the larger your paintbrush becomes. So you stop doing miniatures and you’re now doing Rothko. You can’t do miniatures the size of Rothko’s.

Purpose and Vision

Purpose continues to take a well-deserved stand at the tables of organizations. Why? Because it is the raison d’être for your organization’s existence. Your organization begins and ends with purpose—it provides employees and other stakeholders with meaning and should aptly be at the front and center of the organization to foster a shared sense of we’re in this together.

Keryn James, CEO, ERM, says:

Ultimately it is the CEO’s role to ensure that the purpose is clearly articulated and that the values of the organization reinforce the delivery of that purpose are lived.

A common purpose unifies employees. It helps them understand the organization’s direction and helps to align organizational capabilities to deliver the strategy. Purpose provides impetus for action by galvanizing your employees to do their best work and to see how their role relates to it. It is why we are here and what we are doing to make a difference in the world. Therefore, it is essential that employees and all stakeholders understand the organization’s purpose. To this end, it has to be both resonate and relevant, and CEO Ben Page reiterates this sentiment:

Growing up as a junior in the organization I used to think that mission/values were trite bullshit, but the data show that knowing what is going on makes a 40 percent point difference in understanding the goals of the organization. Why are we here? Where do we want to go? What do we want to be like? What are we trying to do? People want to be part of something that is bigger than them.

Ben illustrates this by sharing a story,

Have you heard the NASA JFK story? During the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, President Kennedy announced that their mission is to put a man on the moon by end of the decade. So he goes down to NASA space center and he is having a pee in the loo and he asks the janitor who is sweeping the floor what do you do and he answers by saying Sir I am working to put a man on the moon.

Purpose is beyond maximizing shareholder value. It is about our value as an organization and our contribution to the world, over and above products and profits. Purpose considers the whole ecosystem—an ecosystem that embraces a holistic perspective and takes on board, broader societal issues. It is the motivating force moving, guiding, and delivering the organization to its perceived goal. It is the driving force and the intangible link that pulls the organization together to achieve success while connecting, building, and maintaining interests and relationships among multiple stakeholders.

Mark Hoplamazian, CEO, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, advocates that purpose considers the wider ecosystem. He says:

At Hyatt, we have a purpose statement, which is: we care for people so they can be their best. In this expression, we capture many dimensions. We focus on care, not service, which a lot of hospitality companies have historically focused on. We talk about caring for people and not just guests. But first and foremost, our colleagues. We manage hotels for third party-owners (institutions or individuals who own our hotels), and we have a duty to them so we care for them as well. The other key constituency is members of the communities in which we operate. Be good neighbors and good corporate citizens.

Alongside the organization’s purpose, unquestionably, a key responsibility of a CEO is to develop a vision for their organization. Vision paints the picture for how purpose will be realized and sits at the core of the organization’s strategy. Vision is what the collective organization aspires to. The CEO defines the direction that they would like their organization to take and then seeks buy-in from all stakeholders to establish fundamental working principles in the pursuit of executing that vision. In my conversations with CEOs, vision in terms of setting strategic direction was stated as a key component of their role as CEO.

Xavier Rees, CEO, Havas London and Havas Helia, says that

Vision is vitally important for in your darkest moments and your most exciting moments you need to remind yourself where you are headed and that you have made progress. It serves as a guiding light/ North Star but more than that, it is a great counsel in your own mind when you are either up against it or faced with the excitement of a huge opportunity.

Similarly, Luc Van den hove, CEO, IMEC, reflects that:

You always encounter issues and problems but when you lay down the vision you have to aim high and especially focus on the sense of purpose of the organization so that people can feel associated with and be motivated and understand that the organization does not just stand for maximizing revenue but that there is a broader/ higher level purpose for the organization.

To develop a vision, CEOs need to determine not only the core competencies of their organization but also the core capabilities required to deliver on the core competencies identified. They have to determine whether the vision objectively reflects the organization’s reality as well as the reality of the environment.

Furthermore, the CEO has to sell the vision by articulating why this vision is the best way forward for the organization and in pursuing it, what outcomes they hope to achieve. Articulation must be emotional and inspirational. It must touch both hearts and minds.

It is then necessary to establish values and behaviors to support the vision. Values confirm what we as an organization believe in and act as a golden thread that can hold the company together. Behaviors support the values by defining the manner in which we will execute. That is, act, practice, and deliver on the values and ultimately the vision. However, is this the process that is normally taken? My experience suggests not.

Herein lies my first organizational reality for leaders: when I meet with employees and ask them to help me to understand: (a) what their organization’s purpose is and (b) what their organization’s vision is, I am normally met with blank stares. My experience is that most employees in organizations struggle to both define and echo their organization’s purpose and vision. Worse still, even if employees do remember these statements, most are dismissive of their leaders intent and ambitions lying behind them.

This raises a number of questions? Why do these concepts of purpose and vision lose wind as they blow through the organization? Why are CEOs and their leadership teams not successful in distilling their purpose and vision further down the organization? Why is there often a lack of clarity throughout the organization on how employees collectively will achieve the purpose and vision? Why is purpose becoming a purpose echo chamber? Why are employees unable to articulate, aspire, or feel motivated to achieve the essence of these statements? I believe employees lack the understanding and engagement with their organization’s purpose and vision for four reasons.

First, is a glaring lack of involvement with employees. Let me paint a scenario for you. Most likely, the leadership team have had an away day where both the purpose and the vision statements were developed. More so, it is extremely likely that these statements were created from a mishmash of other corporations statements that the CEO and his team have seen, even admired, but bear no relation to their own organizational context. Furthermore, no other employees in the organization were consulted; no opinions were listened to; no contributions were sought! Worse still—and a situation that I have witnessed and personally experienced— the CEO and the C-suite direct a handful of consultants and employees to go away and come up with a vision statement for their organization and to develop the values and behaviors to accompany the vision. When the CEO and the C-suite were asked to be involved in the development of these statements (which by the way would enable them to have personal buy-in and ownership of these statements), they denied the opportunity with the response we don’t have time for this … this is what you are being paid to do.

Let me be crystal clear, the development of the very foundations that the organization sat on was devised by a group of individuals with no direct input from the C-suite. The rot continued when employees were presented with a list of more than 15 behaviors that they were encouraged to practice in the knowledge that in all probability, they would only remember at best 3 of the 15 behaviors. Tellingly, you definitely did not see any of these behaviors being practiced by anyone in the senior leadership team! Basically, the vision, behaviors, and values were developed in a superficial vacuum. They were not rooted in the business need or culture, nor were they granular enough to guide action across the organization.

The second reason I believe employees lack the understanding and engagement with their organization’s purpose and vision is because intentions don’t match with actions. Basically, the CEO and his peers will say one thing and then be observed doing exactly the opposite. This had led to the accusation in which CEOs are said to be purpose washing. This is they talk about purpose but are not backing up their promises with hard action. Nor, have they considered how they will drive purpose through their organizations or with multiple stakeholders. In Chapter 2, I will address this leadership behavior. But for now, this is mirrored in the findings from Business in the Community (BITC is a UK organization) inaugural tracker for responsible business that found that 86 percent of companies had a purpose statement—but 83 percent had not yet thought about how to implement it. Subsequently, these statements appear contrived—developed to be part of an overarching piece of marketing and brand reputation for the organization.

My third reason centers on how the purpose and vision statements are communicated, in particular, the language that is used to communicate. A CEO will stand on a podium at a conference or town hall and communicate the purpose or vision in a way that is often steeped and shrouded in corporate language—language that fails to inspire or emote, thereby eradicating any shared understanding. As Rita McGrath says, It is only with a basis of a shared understanding of what we’re all trying to achieve here that distributed action is possible. In organizations that don’t have a clarity of strategy and alignment, decisions get made and unmade, resources are spent on things that are not really relevant, people end up confused, and the stage is set for the kind of infighting that contributes to the demise of the company.

Fourth, vision is not intractably linked to a way of being or, to roles? The leaders have not painted the imagery or indeed the hard evidence of how employee’s roles will help the organization’s vision to be fulfilled. They fail to draw on and emphasize the key acts that employees can do, or engage with, so that the ambitions of these statements are realized. They fail to outline the character and cultural attributes of the organization that align with the purpose and vision that will allow employees to see, feel, and engage with the spirit of these statements. Ultimately, they fail to tap into or draw upon the emotional, cultural, and cognitive insights of their employees, and in so doing, they damage the cultural fabric of their business.

Above all, the one question that arises when CEOs formulate purpose and vision is can these statements be aligned with what the CEO stands for? This is critical because individual and organizational purpose go hand in hand. The CEO needs to unconditionally believe in what they are advocating, and if this belief is recognized, then stakeholders will be able to both see and feel their authenticity. If authenticity radiates from the CEO, this will give their purpose and vision the building blocks to empower the entire organization. Of course, this requires that the CEO really knows himself or herself!

Interestingly, when the CEO gives an insight into their own values, the knock on effect is that employees start to delve into their own values and subsequently ask themselves questions such as: Does the organization’s purpose resonate with me? What do I feel called to do and can this organization allow me to express this? Do I have the capability to deliver upon the vision? If not, will buying into the purpose and vision help me grow and develop? In essence, when the individual and organizational purpose enter into resonance and reinforce each other, the leaders are doing their job. Otherwise, cognitive dissonance is created.

What a CEO Can Do

CEO, don’t complicate … simplify. Start with simple questions? It’s that simple. Questions delve into the root cause that helps us to understand the reason behind what we are doing. It forces